Vidya Nagarajan, Senior Product Manager, Cloud Identity
Whether we’re collaborating with teammates in different parts of the world, troubleshooting client issues on location, or checking email on the way to the airport, cloud apps and mobile devices have fundamentally changed the way we work. In fact, they’ve changed the way businesses need to approach security.
Today, the average user works on three or more devices and needs quick access to business apps they rely on so that they can work wherever and whenever they need to. That being said, IT administrators now face the challenge of staying on top of an ever-evolving ecosystem of users, apps and devices.
Here at Google, we’ve faced similar firsthand challenges. Using this knowledge and our experience from managing billions of consumer and enterprise identities, we developed Cloud Identity. With Cloud Identity, employees get simple, secure and quick access to their business-critical apps and devices, while administrators get the tools they need to manage it all in one unified location.
Simple access for users + simple control for administrators
Cloud Identity gives people simple, one-click access to the apps they need so they can work from anywhere and on any device. This means employees can focus on their work, while administrators can manage identities, associated apps and devices at scale from one integrated console as people join, move within, and leave an organisation.
Cloud Identity’s single sign-on supports SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) 2.0 and OpenID. It also works with hundreds of applications out of the box such as Salesforce, SAP SuccessFactors, Box and G Suite apps — such as Google Docs and Google Drive.
For organisations using GCP (Google Cloud Platform) resources, Cloud Identity provides additional controls for managing users and groups across their hybrid on-premises and cloud infrastructures.
Work anywhere, secure everywhere
Gone are the days when employees worked from one computer at their office to get the job done. Today, they need the freedom to work from anywhere and understanding that context — what they need to do, where, and with what device— is what should guide enterprise access. Having the right mobile device and application management posture for this is paramount.
Cloud Identity includes robust mobile device management for Android and iOS with many features like account wipe and passcode enforcement automatically enabled for users. Administrators can use one integrated console to implement screen locks, find devices, enforce two-step verification and phishing-resistant security keys, and manage Chrome Browser usage. They also get security reports and analytics for things like suspicious logins, user activity reports and audits, and logins to third-party apps, sites and extensions.
Integration partners like Salesforce have told us they’ve benefited from these additional security postures.
Salesforce Senior Vice President of Identity and Security Product Management Chuck Mortimore says, “With the combination of the Salesforce Platform and Cloud Identity’s robust support for Security Keys and Chrome management, companies can focus on delivering customer success with confidence that they’re providing the right service, to the right user, at the right time.”
Open standards, open ecosystem
Google prides itself for its commitment to open standards in the security space. This is why Cloud Identity was built to be open. It’s easy for customers to seamlessly integrate other cloud and on-premises directories with Cloud Identity.
We’re also continuing to work with our strong ecosystem of identity partners so that customers can choose the best solutions to meet their requirements across hybrid-deployments.
We’re a team of six, but Cloud Identity helps us manage our identity lifecycle management at scale—Daniel Tehrani,
All the functionality you need in one license
Cloud Identity was built to give enterprises all the functionality they need right out of the box. That means businesses have the right tools to protect their users, devices and data all in one place — without needing to add other solutions or licenses.
Over the past few months, we’ve worked with a broad range of customers such as ExtraHop Networks and HealthChannels, to help them meet their identity needs.
“At HealthChannels, we help dynamically staff 15,000+ medical scribes at hospitals and doctor’s offices,” Tehrani says. “That means onboarding, moving and offboarding hundreds of people in a given month, while maintaining visibility and control over the applications they have access to. We’re a team of six, but Cloud Identity helps us manage our identity life cycle management at scale.”
Lava is an authorised Cloud Partner of Google and is a reseller of G Suite (previously known as Google Apps, Google Maps for Work, and Google Cloud Platform) in Malaysia. We also provide cloud hosting and cloud migration services. With more than a decade of experience in the industry. We’re proud to say we’re one of the leading cloud service providers and consultants in the Asia Pacific region.